The singer is one of a host of musicians who will perform this evening at "In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement," which is the latest in a music series. Also performing: Yolanda Adams, Joan Baez, Natalie Cole, Jennifer Hudson, John Legend, John Mellencamp, Smokey Robinson, Seal, the Blind Boys of Alabama, the Howard University Choir, and The Freedom Singers. Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman and Queen Latifah are among those who will do readings of famous civil rights speeches and writings.

The event will be streamed live starting at 5 p.m. on the White House web site. 

Yosi Sergant is the L.A. publicist who had a brief run as the communications director of the National Endowment for the Arts before he ran into the Glenn Beck buzzsaw last September, due to the hysteria on the right over a conference call to drum up volunteers and projects for Serve.gov.

Since Sergant resigned in September, he's kept a low profile, and has not talked to the media. He was even reluctant to give an interview to a friend, Hillel Aron of Neon Tommy, but recently did. What Sergant --- who may have the distinction of being the most misspelled name on the Internet --- lays out is a case of his words being warped, misconstrued and taken out of context, fueled by suspicions because of his previous work promoting Barack Obama's candidacy through art.

Aron writes of the conference call: "It wasn't until a half hour into the call when Yosi spoke: "What we're asking is for you to take an action. What it looks like is completely up to you. We want you in the fight.... I would encourage you to something, whether it's health care, education, the environment, you know, there's four key areas that the corporation has identified as the areas of service.""

Apologies for today's lack of posts , as I was finishing up a few projects most of the day.

So I will weigh in on the Super Bowl ad that has stirred the most political debate, post-game: No, it's not the Tim Tebow spot from Focus on the Family, which turned out to be much ado about nothing, but the spot for the U.S. Census.

Created by Christopher Guest, best known for "Waiting for Guffman" and "Best in Show," the spot was a rather irreverent effort to get the suspicious or apathetic public to fill out their forms for this year's constitutionally required count. Reviews of the spot were mixed, as some critics found that the message may have gotten lost in the ad's artfulness, and that the audience most likely to respond are the same people most likely to turn in their forms. Chuck Todd of NBC News tweeted, "Really, census people, that's as good as you can do? That should cost Hollywood a Cong. seat." (Hey, it's better than previous efforts, including this 1980 spot with Edward James Olmos.)

Given the massive sums for 30-second spots --- upwards of $2.5 million this year --- the Census Bureau's outlay came under fire from John McCain, who wrote that "we shouldn't be wasting $2.5 million taxpayer dollars to compete with ads for Doritos!" But the Census Bureau argued that even a slight increase in participation can save taxpayers many multiples of that. Given that the Super Bowl generated 106.5 million viewers, the largest audience ever for a single network telecast, they may have the last laugh. And critics aside, no one came out a bigger winner than Guest: More people probably saw the spot than ever went to his movies --- combined.

John Ainsworth, who with John Ireland is producing a YouTube recreation of the Perry vs. Schwarzenegger Prop 8 trial, expects to complete shooting in the next day or so, with the rest posted on their site in the next couple of weeks.

The latest piece of casting: Morgan Fairchild, who will play M.V. Lee Badgett, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts and an expert witness on the 6th day of the case.

Ainsworth, an actor, says a highlight has been the recreation of the testimony of William Tam, the same-sex marriage foe who had expressed fears that televising the trial would subject him to harassment, who is played by Gedde Watanabe. But he's also mindful that such witnesses are the dramatic moments in hundreds of pages of legal detail, making for long days of production followed by up to 11 hours of editing.

"We have to show all of it," Ainsworth says of what he calls the "mind boggling"  task of getting the complete record, some 3,000 pages of transcripts, on video. "We decided we can't include some portions and not others, or they will claim bias based on that." (One of the bigger expenses has been making copies of the script).

He and Ireland, a filmmaker, came up with the idea on Jan. 13, the day that the Supreme Court issued its ruling blocking the showing of the trial on YouTube.

Essentially, what they have done is create a set up that mirrors Judge Vaughn Walker's plans for a split screen at the trial, with a mock courtoom at USC's law school standing in for the federal courtroom in San Francisco. Having planned to stream the real thing, YouTube and its engineers were ready to handle this project, and provided consultation.

"We were just filling in where [the actual trial] would have been," he said.

The actors --- who also include Tess Harper, Arye Gross and Adrienne Barbeau --- have little time to prepare, not to mention memorize all of their lines. But because this project is sticking strictly to the transcript, and "we don't want them to be adding too much in character."

"It's almost an exercise in cold reading," Ainsworth says.

Instead, the subtleties will come through in other ways. The crescendo of the trial was undoubtedly David Boies' (Jack Laufer) contentious cross examination of defense witness David Blankenhorn, the president of the Institute for American Values, who is being played by Gregory Itzin. Journalists who were in the courtroom have been consulting, Ainsworth notes, and they've learned that Blankenhorn's baritone voice started going into a falsetto as he sparred with Boies and the afternoon dragged on.

Visual artist Chuck Close is among the new members appointed to President Obama's Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

The White House said that others nominated to the committee, chaired by Margo Lion and George Stevens, are entertainment attorney Fred Goldring, BET co-founder Sheila Johnson, Avid Partners founder Pamela Joyner, writer Jhumpa Lahiri and Ovation TV chairman Ken Solomon. Goldring and Solomon were Obama campaign bundlers, and Joyner was a major donor.

Carly Fiorina's Demon Sheep spot --- now up to more than 400,000 views on YouTube --- is exactly what the campaign wanted: Attention. It's a line of reasoning for web videos that differs from that of a 30-second spot: Strange is good. In other words, success is measured by how far and how wide the video travels virally, especially when it is for free, and particularly when journos write about them.

The counterargument, advanced by her opponents, is that it is so ridiculous as to reflect bad on the candidate.

But what would you rather watch --- this, or yet another candidate staring straight into the camera in mock earnestness. Or better yet, another attack ad with an ominous voice.

With that in mind, here are the five strangest political web videos --- a list destined to multiply as we head into the midterms.

ObamaHasselhoff 2008. Around the time that John McCain's campaign introduced its famous "Celeb" ad, the Republican National Committee debuted this Web video that compared Barack Obama's trip to Berlin to the German love for David Hasselhoff. When this came out, I called Hasselhoff's manager for comment, and he had a hard time believing it, or even knowing what I was talking about.

Hillary4U&me: Silicon Valley exec Gene Wang produced this music video in the summer of 2007 as a tribute to Hillary Clinton, whom he supported in the primaries, but it didn't really get noticed until the spring of 2008, when things got really bitter between Clinton and Obama die-hards. The production is kitschy, the flavor is "Up with People," and yes, it is real.

Vote Different: This takeoff of Apple's famous "1984 ad --- with Hillary Clinton taking the place of Big Brother --- created an instant stir in the campaigns when it was introduced by an anonymous creator in April, 2007. The creator saidthat "a friend suggested the idea after reading a New York Times article about the Clinton's campaign bullying of donors and political operatives after the Geffen dustup." As it turned out, the creator was Phillip de Vellis, who worked a Blue State Digital, a company that had done work for the Obama campaign. As the campaign denied its involvement, he resigned his position.

Mike Gravel - Rock: Mike Gravel was a third-tier Democratic candidate for President, but the most memorable moment from his campaign may have been this video made in May, 2007 in which he stares at the camera, saying nothing, for more than two minutes before turning around and throwing a rock in a pond. It was odd, but then again so ordinary.

The Gathering Storm: In April 2009 Late night comedians endlessly mocked this spot from the National Organization for Marriage, Stephen Colbert said it was "like watching 'The 700 Club" and The Weather Channel at the same time." NOM went on to have a hand in the successful electoral defeat of same-sex marriage in Maine, although by then this spot wasn't getting airtime.

That, and other news, in today's Roundup and Recap.

Fred Davis, the ad guru behind Carly Fiorina's now famous, ridiculed and (among some) revered Demonsheep web video, explains to Time why he came up with a concept that can best be described as Monty Python with a message.

Time's Michael Scherer has a great profile of Davis, who says, "My whole deal in life is if nobody sees it and nobody talks about it, you have wasted your money."

Scherer writes that as the spot left many scratching their heads, Davis "watched the explosion with a sort of mischievous delight. "In California, it costs almost $5 million to fund one 30-second TV spot statewide," he explained in an interview on Thursday. "We have to go out of the way to get attention. I would say we probably got more attention on this little sheep film that they would get for $10 million of advertising.""

Democrats biggest problem come November may very well come down to enthusiasm. Recent off year and special elections show that one of the most energetic voting blocks failed to turn out, perhaps tipping key races in the Republicans favor.

With 10 months to go, the Democratic National Committee's political arm Organizing for America is trying to re-activate its base, via the org Gen44. With an introductory video from Dule Hill, the new effort is aimed organizing this voter segment via a series of regional and social networks.

On the latest Wilshire & Washington on the Radio, Maegan Carberry talks to Gen44 finance chair Sharon Yang about the challenge of reigniting interest as the Democrats face a dire forecast in this year's midterms. You can listen to the show here.

Al Franken was perhaps the hardest hitting lawmaker on the proposed Comcast-NBC Universal merger today --- and he raised doubts about whether the two media giants are to be believed.

“I worked for NBC for many years,” he said in a Senate subcommittee hearing, before Comcast's Brian Roberts and NBC Universal's Jeff Zucker, per the Washington Post. “And what I know from my previous career has given me reason to be concerned—let me rephrase that, very concerned—about the potential merger of Comcast and NBC Universal.”

His big concern: that Comcast would show favoritism toward NBC content.

He added, “Let me start with something pretty basic: it matters who runs our media companies. The media are our source of entertainment, but they’re also the way we get our information about the world. So when the same company produces the programs and runs the pipes that bring us those programs, we have a reason to be nervous.”

Franken, the former "Saturday Night Live" writer and creator of the short-lived NBC sitcom "LateLine," cited the relaxation of "fin-syn" rules, which essentially prevented networks from owning the shows they aired in primetime. The removal of "fin syn" has long been a rallying cry for writers and creators in the face of media consolidation, as networks in the 1990s began to demand an ownership stake in series as a condition for getting a show on the air. It's what the Writers Guild of America points to in pushing for net neutrality regulations, which would require Internet providers to treat all content equally.

"This is completely contrary to what NBC and the other networks said they would do when they were trying to get Fin-Syn rescinded," Franken said.

He also said that he feared the merger "could set off another round of media consolidation."

Video is here.

That, and other news, in today's Roundup and Recap.

Midterm candidates are ramping up their fund-raising in Los Angeles and Hollywood circles, activity that will only accelerate as the year goes on and as Democrats sound the alarm on tough reelection battle. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is scheduled to raise money at a cocktail reception on Feb. 16 at the Bel Air home of Norah and Bruce Broillet. Others who have recently raised money in industry circles include Robin Carnahan, running for Senate in Missouri, and, for his reelection bid, Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

This morning a House subcommittee is hearing testimony on the proposed Comcast and NBC U match up, with Brian Roberts and Jeff Zucker telling that the deal will bolster broadcast television and stimulate competition. A rep for the Consumer Federation of America opposed the merger outright, while the CEO of a competing cable service argued for significant conditions. Lawmakers indicated concern, but in opening statements none indicated that they opposed the deal. Several Republicans, in fact, said that federal regulators speed up their review. And there was a lot of discussion about the deal's impact on NBC's affiliates, particularly their ability to negotiate agreements with cable providers to carry their stations. Inevitably, there was a poke at the recent Leno-Conan flap. Roberts' oral tesitimony is here. Rep. Mike Rogers made a quip about offering to hire Conan O'Brien, but the joke seemed to fall flat.

Music artists jumped on the lobby for a Performance Rights Act during Grammy week last week, with Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Stephen Stills, Sheryl Crow, Dave Matthews, Flea, Josh Groban, Mary J. Blige and Stevie Nicks among the 20 or so signing a statement, right, supporting the legislation. It would require that broadcast stations compensate artists and musicians when their music is played on the radio. 

Meanwhile, the Media Institute, which includes reps from firms like DirectTV, Viacom, Microsoft, Time Warner, NBC Universal and Warner Music on its board of trustees, posted a critical look at the legislation on its website that was written by the orgs vice president, Richard T. Kaplar. He wrote that record companies should "not try to kill the 'golden goose' of radio broadcasting in order to boost their bottom lines. Free music for free airplay has stood the test of time."

More on the demon sheep: Tom Campbell, who is running against Carly Fiorina, is now using her online attack video to raise money. Teddy Davis of ABC News reports that Campbell's fund-raising email reads: "Carly's ad likens fiscal conservatives to sheep, and Tom to a demon sheep, without mentioning a single federal issue or proposing a single solution to America's economic woes. Seriously." Fiorina's other opponent, Chuck Devore, is also taking a dig at the web vid, setting up his own demonsheep.org site, officially named the Society for the Eradication of Demon Sheep from Our Political Discourse. But does Fiorina have the last laugh? One of the purposes of viral campaign vids is to get the spots spread around the Internet, which it certainly has, and it's so far generated more than 100,000 views on YouTube.

Update: The voice in the spot, according to ABC's The Note, is actor Robert Davi. According to the Daily Beast, the man responsible for Demonsheep was Fred Davis, the colorful, Hollywood-based ad guru famously responsible for John McCain's "Celebrity" attack spot on Barack Obama last year. Slate profiles him here.

"The Daily Show" host drops in to "The O'Reilly Factor."

Last week I posted a political ad from the New Orleans coroners race that was too bizarre to be believed, but it was real.

Today there is a new entrant, a web video from Carly Fiorina, running for the Republican nomination to faceoff against Barbara Boxer, in which Fiorina's campaign attacks her challenger Tom Campbell as "FCINO," fiscal conservative in name only. The spot is way too long, but more importantly is its strange imagery of sheep and a "wolf in sheep's clothing." The sheep are real, but the wolf is probably some campaign worker who got the unfortunate task of dressing up in a menacing costume.  

Could this be a new trend in political advertising --- the more metaphorically strange, the better? (via Gawker).

The ad already is being called the "demon sheep" spot, with some comments insisting that it must have come from someone like Terry Gilliam. On Twitter, John Dickerson tweets that it is "the most innovative pitch for allowing pot to be smoked at the workplace that I've seen."

That, and other news, in today's Roundup and Recap.

Comcast's Brian Roberts and NBC Universal's Jeff Zucker will appear before two congressional subcommittees on Thursday to outline the consumer benefits of their proposed merger. In advance, Comcast exec VP David L. Cohen signalled some of their arguments in a blog post on the Comcast website. He reiterated that the company would continue to run NBC as a broadcaster with an affiliate model, as well as commit to boosting local news programming by some 1,000 hours per year at NBC's owned and operated stations. He argued that the newly merged company would still face formidable competition, including from satellite providers and nascent telco services from AT&T and Verizon. He wrote, "Even if competition itself wasn’t enough to protect consumers, there are specific FCC rules that require programming owned by a cable company to be shared with competitors, as well as rules that forbid any cable company from favoring programming it owns over other channels. These rules work, and we will of course abide by them (as we do today)."

As for Internet video, he wrote that "our combined share of the market is miniscule" and "it just isn’t credible to conclude that we have any capacity to get in the way of the development of video over the Internet."

Robert and Zucker will testify in the morning before the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, and in the afternoon before the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, whose members include Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), the former cast member of NBC's "Saturday Night Live."

Other witnesses scheduled at the Senate hearing include Colleen Abdoulah, president and CEO of WOW! Internet, Cable and Phone; Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America: and Andrew J. Schwartzman, president and CEO of the Media Access Project. Also slated to testify at the House hearing: Michael Fiorile, chairman of the NBC affiliates board, who is concerned that stations will be forced to accept lower sums from Comcast for the rights to run their broadcast feeds on its cable systems.

Schwartzman was among the advocates on a teleconference this morning, outlining opposition to the merger, including possible higher cable rates, less independent programming, and conentration of TV and movie content by a distributor with a wide reach on cable stations, broadcast stations and the Internet.

CBS and Focus on the Family worked closely to craft the latter's controversial Super Bowl spot, according to the Daily Beast. "There were discussions about the specific wording of the spot," Gary Schneeberger, spokesperson for Focus on the Family, told the website. "And we came to a compromise. To an agreement." The network altered its policy to allow for advocacy ads --- to a certain degree. The Daily Beast today rounds up "12 Banned Super Bowl Ads," including a spot for Mancrunch that was rejected this year. Rejected last year: This Snickers spot:

John Ireland and John Ainsworth have completed the first day reenactment of Perry v. Schwarzenegger and posted it on YouTube. It isn't "Inherit the Wind" --- in fact, so far the real thing was a bit more dramatic --- but it's a noble effort to try to get some sense of what it was like in the courtroom after the Supreme Court nixed the idea of Internet streaming.

There's more to come, with Adrienne Barbeau and Arye Gross among those cast as some of the witnesses. Tess Harper plays plaintiff Sandy Stier.

Meanwhile, the documentary "8: The Mormon Proposition" debuted at Sundance with mixed reviews, but it has generated some condemnation from the Mormon church.

Photo: Ted Heyck, left, plays Vaughn Walker, right.

President Obama's budget proposal holds the line on arts organizations, and even offers a bump for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

That's good news for those still stinging from memories of the 90s, or even of the Bush years, when it seemed like PBS was perpetually in peril. (The most effective argument for saving it: How could they kill Big Bird?)

But it's bad news for those who expected a kind of arts renaissance led by Washington. Obama's $161.3 million for the National Endowment for the Arts is identical to his administration request last year, but its $6 million less than what Congress ultimately appropriated. Robert Lynch, the president and CEO of Americans for the Arts, said that the decrease comes as the NEA is launching a new program called Our Town, an initiative for investing in arts at the local level. Lynch said in a statement, "But why hamper the potential impact of this new initiative by reducing the NEA’s overall budget?"

Robin Bronk, exec director of the Creative Coalition, was more blistering. She called the cuts "shortsighted." "We all understand the need for fiscal discipline," she said in a statement.  “The notion, however, that you can address the imbalances in this $3.8 trillion dollar budget by cutting into the roughly fifty cents per capita invested by the government each year in our arts sector simply strains credulity."

The administration budgeted $460 million in an advanced appropriation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2013, a boost of $15 million over the budget in 2012. There's also $36 million budgeted for 2011 for a program to help local public TV and radio stations expand their digital efforts. Pat Harrison, president and CEO of CPB, said that while they were "grateful" for the funding, she was concerned that there was not separate funding for a program called Ready to Learn, a Department of Education effort that uses public TV's educational programming to teach low-income children how to read.

"Fortunately, this is the beginning rather than the end of the process," Harrison said in a statement.

There has been a chicken-and-egg scenario playing out on the fate of Roman Polanski, who is currently under house arrest in Switzerland and whose fate has triggered all sorts of political debate, much of it directed at Hollywood.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles are seeking his extradition so he can come to the United States to face sentencing, while a court in Switzerland are weighing whether his punishment falls under the guidelines of the extradition treaty.

But Polanski probably won't be returning to the United States any time soon. That is the conclusion of a Swiss justice minister, who predicted a process of up to a year given inevitable appeals.

"After an extradition decision by the Swiss justice ministry, Mr. Polanski has the possibility of appealing to the Federal Criminal Court and then the Federal Supreme Court," Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told the newspaper Le Matin Dimanche, according to Reuters.

"It's hard to say how long (an appeal) would take, but it could be from several months to a year."